Supergirl: Season 2 Episode 4 review – Survivors

This week the history of Daxom was more thoroughly broached, newcomers Detective Maggie Sawyer and M’gann M’orzz were granted more depth and Dichen Lachman brought the comic book character Roulette to the big screen really well. Below you’ll find our spoiler-heavy review of this week’s episode.

We recently highlighted The Flash‘s apparent aversion to adapting small time comic book characters in costume. This stands out even more when shows like Supergirl (which is now part of the Berlanti-verse too) adapt small time comic book characters in costumes that are replicated down to perfection. We’re talking, of course, of this week’s appearance of Roulette, brought to life by fan-favourite The 100 actress Dichen Lachman. Not only was the revealing red dress donned, but the enormous full body snake tattoo was replicated too.

We loved Lachman’s turn here and even though we’ll probably never see this character again, it’s still great to see a comic book character adapted so well. Draaga’s appearance (played by John DeSantis) shouldn’t go unmarked either, who is also a comic book character and one who holds connections to the classic Superman villain Mongul. Whether this signifies Mongul appearing, we don’t know (we imagine his visage would be a difficult one to pull off), but the show does seem intent on pulling in various Superman rogues.

Roulette (AKA Veronica Sinclair) in the comics.

Maggie Sawyer was great last week, but this week we loved her even more. From her quick and beaming smile to the the reveal that’s she has a girlfriend, this is a character who’s really bringing a lot to Season 2, and we’d say that’s just as much down to Floriana Lima as it is to the writers’ handling of the character. The one thing that keeps happening with so many side characters on all of The CW superhero shows is they leave all too soon and we can say now that we’ll be really irate if this happens with Sawyer.

Talking of losing characters, although Miss Martian didn’t leave the show this week, we still might have lost her in a sense when it was revealed that she’s not a Green Martian at all, but is rather a White Martian posing in disguise. This raises several questions, such as has M’gann been a White Martian all along, or did a White Martian simply adopt her disguise for that final scene with Hank?

If she’s been a White Martian all along then does she hold malicious intent like the other White Martians, or is she perhaps a kinder exception to the rule? Everything she’s done so far has exhibited kindness and rationality. When she first saw Hank she decided to leave, which showed zero intent to trick or harm him, so we’re wondering if this is one White Martian who acts contrary to their race, which would play into the whole “don’t judge an alien by their looks” moral.

Veronica Sinclair (Roulette), played by Daichen Lachman.

Another combo we liked this week was Winn and Mon El hanging around together. Even if it was a little too (unconvincingly) easy for Mon El to convince Winn to risk his job, this duo is a fun one and we’re definitely up for more of this pairing. It made us glad that Winn left his job to work for the DEO. Another smart addition was showing flashback scenes from Daxom. This made the planet a tangible thing for viewers to relate to, rather than just leaving Daxom as the name of some distance planet with an unfamiliar people. Now we know what they were like and we know that they were not too dissimilar to the Kryptonians.

While this might not have been a classic episode of the show to rank among its greats, we really enjoyed what the show provided this week. Maggie, M’gann and Mon El all now feel even more layered and interesting, and Sinclair’s appearance was executed strikingly well. What we want next is a good explanation for the White Martian ruse and for Maggie to stay around as long as possible.

Please note: We won’t be reviewing next week’s episode of Supergirl, due to limited resources. We will instead return to reviewing Supergirl in two weeks’ time (from Episode 6 onwards), as normal.